Spacestation Gaming won day two of the North American ALGS pro league on Sunday, outperforming bigger teams like TSM, G2, and Cloud9, and leaving them tied with Sentinels on the ALGS leaderboard.
Spacestation, a Utah-based organization, previously left the Apex scene in early 2020, but returned in 2021 when they signed Joseph “Frexs” Sanchez, Jay “Claraphi” Stanley, and Angello “Xenial” Cadenas. That squad placed 5th at the ALGS Championship, taking home a bit more than $35,000. Claraphi left in the summer of 2021 and Mark “Dropped” Thees, a former player for Rogue, joined Spacestation for their debut in the ALGS pro league.
That roster has been strong in recent smaller tournaments, but their win tonight had much higher stake. Spacestation was grouped up with some of the most popular and skilled teams in all of pro Apex Legends, and the six matches showcased the fiercest competition the new league has seen thus far.
Established orgs like Cloud9, defending ALGS champions 100 Thieves, G2, Team Liquid, Apex juggernaut TSM, and the popular team SHEEEEEEESH were all playing in the same lobby—treating fans to the biggest spectacle of individual personalities in pro Apex since the ALGS Championship.
That concentration of star power led to impressive viewership numbers for the game on Twitch. While an average of about 12,000 people tuned into the official broadcast tonight, Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen, TSM’s in-game leader, averaged more than 45,000 viewers on his own, and Timmy “iiTzTimmy” An, a popular streamer who plays for team SHEEEEEEESH, averaged 17,000 viewers himself.
But when it came to the competition, Apex celebrities like TSM were outplayed by teams like Spacestation and Esports Arena, who finished in second place. TSM was able to notch a win in the first of the six games but struggled to follow through, ending the night in fifth place. Other blue-chip esports teams struggled as well. CLG, who recently dropped their roster led by Ryan “ImMadness” Schlieve in favor of a less accomplished squad, ended the night in 18th, leaving them with zero points in the overall North American standings. The defending ALGS Champions, signed just last week to 100 Thieves, are in 20th with one point. The fearsome controller squad G2, and the veterans on Team Liquid, are only doing a little bit better.
Of course, anything can happen in the following weeks of competition. Teams will have another five chances to post impressive results in the pursuit of a $125,000 prize pool and spots in a $1 million global LAN playoff, should conditions allow for one.
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